1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a vehicle steering control device and a vehicle steering control method and, more particularly, to a vehicle steering control device and vehicle steering control method that change control rules at the time of automatic steering.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a related-art vehicle steering control device, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2005-324744 (JP-A-2005-324744), for example, discloses a vehicular automatic steering device capable of selecting and disengaging an automatic steering control. In this disclosed technology, when the automatic steering control is selected, a front wheel steering control device starts the automatic steering control after a rear wheel steering control has stopped at a neutral position. When the selection of the automatic steering control is cancelled, the rear wheel steering control device starts the rear wheel steering control after the automatic steering control has stopped. Thus, this technology substantially avoids the discomfort caused to the driver and the like and prevents the wobbling of the vehicle at the time of the automatic steering control.
However, even with the technology in which the start timing of the automatic steering control is prescribed as described above, it sometimes happens that at the time of the automatic steering, the vehicle is not stable and the driver feels discomfort, in comparison with the time of the manual steering performed by the driver.